be a student, not a follower

Leave a Legacy

Mar 14th, 2014

Today was my last day at MoneyDesktop. Brandon Dewitt asked if I would like to say some parting words during the vision meeting. I decided to share a story and some key principles from my personal philosophy.

When I started looking into the possibility of going to work for MoneyDesktop, I was really scared. It took me six months to make the decision to join the team.

The repeating question in my mind was “where can I add value”. The MoneyDesktop team was full of extremely talented people who’s technical ability was light years ahead of mine. How could I ever bring value to this team?

I determined that if I wanted to improve myself and become better I need to go where the expectations where high.
I needed to be around people that were smarter than me and hopefully they would lift me up.

So I got my offer, and the week before I started I read some books on ruby and hoped for the best.

During my interview with CEO Ryan Caldwell, I told him very plainly that I was not a technical powerhouse like the other team members and all I ask of myself and of anyone is to make measureable progress in reasonable time. I asked if we would treat me the same.

Early in my life I learned that success is a result of a few disciplines practiced everyday and failure in life is the result of a few errors in judgement repeated everyday.

By disciplining yourself in a few things, you can become a steward over many things.

Coming into this new job I new that if I setup a few disciplines and worked on them on the everyday, I could make measurable progress is a reasonable time and hopefully add value to the organization.

I believe this philosphy and approach worked. It allowed me to be successful at MoneyDesktop.